CLEMSON, S.C. – Unable to shake off the road dust in the fourth-straight weekend away from Tallahassee, the Florida State volleyball team fell 0-3 (12-25, 17-25, 14-25) to 2007 ACC Champion Clemson on Saturday night in Jervey Gym. The Seminoles slip back to 9-6 overall and 1-4 in the ACC while the Tigers improve to 11-5 and 3-2 in the conference.

“This was the accumulation of a long four weekends on the road,” FSU head coach Chris Poole said. “I thought that this weekend in particular we looked really exhausted, but if you’re gone four weeks in a row, that’s tough.

“It was certainly a concern we had at the first of the year; how are we going to make it through this stretch? Unfortunately we didn’t get through this stretch with our team intact. So we really were facing a lot of different adversity out there on the court and it’s very difficult to overcome that.”

Junior Lauren Young was able to hit at .455 with six kills on 11 attempts. The middle blocker is averaging 1.84 kills per set this season and is currently second behind Brianna Barry with a season .291 attack percentage. The team hopes to have Barry back as it returns to Tully Gym on Friday, she’s been out the past two weeks with an eye injury suffered in practice.

“We ended up using a lineup tonight that we’ve never used in a game before,” Poole said. “So you really don’t know how a team’s going to react. But at the same we had no choices, we had no options. We had to play with who we had.”

Freshman Abby Niekamp also put down six kills on 18 attempts and recorded the team’s only solo block against Clemson. The Noles’ top-blocker, Jordana Price, managed just a block assist alongside Nikki Baker who had 23 assists.

Florida State will return to comfortable surroundings on Friday, Oct. 10, as it hosts Maryland at 7:00 p.m. in Tully Gym.

“We’re certainly very glad to get back home and try to regroup,” Poole said. “What we need to do is take the lessons we’ve learned from the last couple of weeks and go to work. Hopefully we can start getting some of that chemistry back.

“At the same time, I think many of these matches we’ve played on the road the last few weeks are the top of the conference right now. We didn’t get a break in being able to go off and get our feet wet a little bit with our play. We’ve had to jump right into very strong competition and some good, mature, experienced teams. Hopefully we can get back and get to work.”